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Loading... How to Read the Air (original 2010; edition 2010)by Dinaw Mengestu
Work InformationHow to Read the Air by Dinaw Mengestu (2010)
  
No current Talk conversations about this book.   ) Ma_Washigeri | Jan 23, 2021 |  Like the reviewers, or maybe more than them, I found much to be admired in this ambitious novel. The storytelling is very creative, yet still grounded in plausibility of the trials and struggles of the protagonists parents. Jonas grows to finish college with a degree in English and a storytelling gift of his own. In fact, he builds much of his relationships on telling stories (read here - untruths). It is as if he is trying to fade away to obscurity as much as it was his mother's wish for herself. Yet, the more he distances himself from his family, friends and colleagues, the more he returns to the truth that he always will carry them with him - the parting truth of the book. (  ) steller0707 | Aug 25, 2019 | ) aront | Jul 25, 2017 | ) brangwinn | Jul 7, 2016 |  ) klburnside | Aug 11, 2015 |
 "How to Read the Air," the melancholy second novel from critically acclaimed writer Dinaw Mengestu, follows the constant evolution of identity: Its discovery, its unraveling, its reinvention. His characters sag beneath the weight of alienation, of continual adaptation so far from all they know. Through Jonas and his wife, Angela, Mengestu reflects the emptiness inherited by the next generation. Jonas is equal parts liar and elegant storyteller, a survival skill acquired from his mother which he relies upon to cope with his stagnant marriage and career. The death of his father spurs him to retrace the geography and events that brought his parents together and ultimately drove them apart. Undaunted by missing facts within the narrative, he fills in the blanks with imagined scenarios, finding comfort in this freedom to add context and motive, to lend his battered mother strength and choices, even if it is only make-believe. Admittedly, “How to Read the Air” feels weaker than “The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears.” Mengestu’s first novel was a pithy portrayal of immensely different worlds colliding. His second is like a baggy reprise. Jonas’s interiority both illuminates and fatigues; variations on his emotional injuries are rendered too often, becoming clichés of Mengestu’s careful initial depictions. At times Mengestu doesn’t seem to trust his reader to get his point, while the momentum of poetic prose, of a well-turned phrase or astute observation, often continues two clicks too long, detracting from the narrative’s velocity. AwardsDistinctions
Leaving behind his marriage and job in New York, Jonas, the son of Ethiopian immigrants, sets out to retrace his mother and father's trip and weave together a family history that will take him from the war-torn Ethiopia of his parents' youth to his life in the America of today. No library descriptions found. |
LibraryThing Early Reviewers AlumDinaw Mengestu's book How To Read The Air was available from LibraryThing Early Reviewers.  Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.51)
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